1. What is the basic concept of governance? How can governance be used as a framework for assessing the management of hazards? Authors such as Tierney and Ahrens & Rudolph indicate are strengths or weaknesses of hazards governance practices in the U.S. today?
2. What are the core elements of concept "social vulnerability to disaster"? How is social vulnerability assessed? And what is its relationship to community resilience?
3. Resilience is an increasingly important concept to the management of emergencies and disasters. What are the fundamental elements of the idea of community resilience? How do governance practices affect the relative degree of resiliency a community might achieve?